The Sound of the City: That LA Sound

When I lived in New York City, I always heard the sound of music through the honking of horns, small apartments, subways whooshing by, and pianos on the streets during the summer. It's the history of Tin Pan Alley. New York feels busy and it is; spaces like museums, churches, and parks become all the more important for anyone living there to maintain their sanity. Los Angeles doesn't have this sound. A completely different city, it didn't surprise me, but in a certain way it did.

In thinking about this, I wondered what musical best represents Los Angeles musically. There are some old, lesser known musicals set in LA like, "Pipe Dream," that I don't think hold up to accurately reflect the city. It has a rhythm that still feels like Old New York and that Rodgers and Hammerstein sound encourages that connection. Even "Singing in the Rain," seems to only capture a moment of it's history. Although I've been here for a short time, there is an expansiveness that musically is missing; that wide open sky does a lot for the change in rhythm.

Looking at overtures of musical works, one piece that showcases the LA skyline well is a stereotypical choice of, "Lalaland." It has a soft, expansiveness in it's sound, yet still a quick underlying rhythm of people trying to maintain rent and balance their artistic ventures with their more explicit needs, and the needs in what sells. The expansiveness, the need for a car, makes it feel like less of a city, but it most certainly still is a city. If we want to stay stereotypical in choices, New York City is the overture to, "A Chorus Line." Everybody wants to be somebody. And that's the same through line as in "Lalaland."

"Sunset Boulevard" and "City of Angels" also have that wide, western expansiveness, yet a fast-paced level - it's just underneath the overarching, largo stream of music for California. In comparison, "Merrily We Roll Along," has that tough, upbeat, fast paced New York rhythm in contrast. It's sort of like a movie soundtrack vs. a musical cast album, which is ironic to what both cities are most known for. You've got to keep up with each rhythm, wherever you are.

What musical overtures accurately represent where you live? For Western Pennsylvania, where I've been previously, I think the musical writers got something right with, "Flashdance," and "Groundhog's Day." Pennsylvania is tough in it's own way. It's small and still reflective of the coal industry that was once there, smog and all. Let's also not forget it was a key location in Children's Entertainment for American Television with Fred Rogers and Joan Ganz Cooney- and old stars like Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart calling it home. This light, childhood hope for something better is still there somewhere. Just as it also holds that struggle to be culturally significant again. This is upheld through the music in it's bubbly and sharp movements.

That's all for now! Keep with the rhythm, dear ones.